Venture capital (VC) firm Balderton has made its largest ever cryptocurrency investment into London-based startup Ramp. Balderton is also behind giants from Darktrace Revoult.
Goldman Sachs led the funding round as one of Balderton’s top investors. The banking giant is now part of the $52.7 million (£40 million) funding round led by the VC firm. Other key investors included NFX and Wise founder Taavet Hinrikus.
Founded in Warsaw in 2017. Ramp says it wants to “bring the benefits of crypto to the many, not the few” in a responsible way. Its payments infrastructure allows companies to, within hours, put in software that allows crypto purchases directly in-app.
This means that people will not need to be on an exchange such as eToro, or set up a crypto wallet. The startup aims to be the PayPal of the crypto world.
Commenting on Ramp, Yared said the startup is “making buying digital assets as straightforward as buying US dollars when making a purchase from your favourite American brand in Euros”.
The raise is the latest news in a year in which major players like bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have moved further into the mainstream.
“We firmly believe that digital assets will create tectonic shifts, where this emerging technology will have a powerful impact across gaming, financial services, and how we own real assets,” Yared added.
Balderton’s largest previous direct crypto investment was in German digital asset platform Finoa. For this, the VC led a $22 million funding round.
Ramp has seen transaction volumes grow 30 times over the past year and was registered by the Financial Conduct Authority in July. Partners of the promising company include Mozilla and NFT-based game Axie Infinity.
Szymon Sypniewicz, Ramp co-founder and CEO, said Yared’s experience at Goldman “will be essential for helping us achieve international growth”.
The CEO said that being based in London “provides us with the right regulatory, tech, funding and skills environment to scale Ramp”. He went on to explain that the firm intends to create “hundreds of jobs in crypto in London over the next few years”.
